Leaving No Stone Unturned

'It was about 15 years ago. I was in the South of France, sitting at a typewriter. That was when I decided to write a book that would tell what it was truly about.''

Fifteen years down the line, Bill Wyman is sitting in his London office, talking by phone about his new book, Stone Alone (Viking, $22.95).

In conversation, Wyman, 54, is as reserved and unassuming as one would expect of the man who for the past 27 years has stood like a statue onstage while Mick Jagger preened and strutted before the fans. During those years he has scrupulously avoided the media glare - apart from the deluge of publicity surrounding a 1989 marriage to teen-ager Mandy Smith. He rarely has become entangled in the controversies and the drugs and assorted hoopla that are the stuff of the Stones.

Who would have thought that all that time the quiet man was writing it all down in a series of diaries and keeping every clipping and notice and stuffing it all away until it filled 35 trunk-loads of material and memorabilia? Who would have thought that any of the Stones would have had the sheer diligence to then write it all down in a book?

Wyman has done it.

In its 594 pages, Stone Alone captures ''The World's Greatest Rock 'n' Roll Band'' in its initial '60s phase like no other book before it. That's because Wyman's book is the first of its kind - a firsthand account of rock's reigning royalty by one of the participants. Elvis never did it. None of the Beatles really did. And none of Wyman's mates in the Stones. Just Bill.

''Perhaps I'm the only one who can remember,'' he says with a chuckle.

And how he remembers. In its exacting, notably straightforward prose, Wyman's book tells its tale in broad swaths and almost scientifically minute detail. With a writing assist from British rock journalist Ray Coleman, Wyman lays the Stones and their story bare.

No Stone is left unturned, from the big issues and myths - such as the ages-old assumption that the group's bad-boy pose was created by its initial manager, Andrew Loog Oldham - to the little items such as bank accounts of the Stones, the make of their guitars, the set lists from long-ago performances and the hair colors of their groupies.

''Most of the books that have been written about us,'' he says, ''were written by people who either didn't know us at all or only knew us for five minutes. They never talked to us. To them, we were just a matter of drug busts and hit songs and women and (urinating) on the garage walls (a 1964 incident that is a part of Stones' lore). I don't like those books.

''I didn't want to write an expose. I just wanted to tell what the Stones were really about, as people and a group. I'm one of the few people who could do that. I think I kind of know those guys by now.''

He's also one of the few people - i.e., the Stones themselves - who are likely to do it. But, ''it's a very hectic life, being in the Stones,'' he says, offhandedly. ''I think most of the guys are too busy all the time with the group, thinking about the songs and performing, as they should. It's a chore to write a book.''

Reading the book, one wonders that Wyman had the time. Turning the pages, it's tricky finding a paragraph in which he isn't hopping into the sack with a groupie. He writes that one night in 1965, he sat down in a bar with Brian Jones, the group's founding guitarist, and they tabulated the group's ''take'' to that point. ''I'd had 278 girls, Brian 130, Mick about 30, Keith six and Charlie none.''

When did he find the time to write his diaries?

''The girls did go home afterward,'' he says with a laugh.

But if such accounts make Stone Alone seem like a scandal-filled slug fest, that would be misleading. In fact, Wyman's book is remarkably objective in its portrayal of the group and its history. Other books have stressed the public images of the Stones and the scandals and the myths. Stone Alone makes the Stones live and breathe as people.

What emerges is the picture of a group of young musicians from mostly humble backgrounds, who start out devoting themselves to playing the then-obscure genres of blues and rhythm and blues and end up conquering the world of pop.

''What most people don't realize,'' Wyman says, ''is that we were just a group of guys who wanted to play music. We didn't get into it for personal gain, or the women or anything else - although that came with it.

''We were like a jazz group. We were serious about our music; we played in jazz rhythms while other groups were playing straight beats and we were loose, we did the songs the way that we felt them at the time, which wasn't the way other groups did it. The band itself was more important than anything else. That's why we have been able to stay together all this time.

''It's like the breakup of the Beatles. It was girlfriends that broke them up, wasn't it? When girlfriends got in the way of the Stones, the Stones got new girlfriends.''